The Cadets and the Octobrists

Published:Zvezda, No. 16, April 2, 1911.

      Signed:V.Ilyin.

      Published according to theZvezdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1974],

      Moscow,Volume 17,

      pages134-138.Translated:Dora CoxTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Thenotorious “Cabinet crisis” and the election of a new
Chairman of the State

Duma[1]have provided additional material on the social nature and
political significance of the Cadet and the Octobrist parties. For the
hundredth or the thousandth time the Russian liberal (save the mark!)
bourgeoisie has shown its true colours. From the daily press and from the
preceding issue ofZvezda, the reader knows what these colours
are. It may not be superfluous, however, to sum up some of the conclusions,
in view of the fact that the Cadet press, which is the most widely
circulated, willingly “thunders” against the Octobrists, but is very
loath to deal with theresultsof the Cadets’ own actions.

Letus recall the behaviour of the party of “people’s freedom” during
the elections of the new Chairman of the State Duma. On March 21,Rechhastened to report: “The people’s freedom group has decided
to vote for M. Alexeyenko if he is nominated for the post of Chairman of
the State Duma. If, however, Rodzyanko is nominated, the group will vote
against him”. The Constitutional-“Democrats” offer their services to the
“Left” Octobrists. But that is not all. The leading article inRechof the same date declares that Alexeyenko is “universally
respected”, and tries to deal with the matter from the standpoint of theentireState Duma: if, it says, the Rights support the nominee of
the majority of the Octobrists (i. e., Alexeyenko’s candidacy), then the
State Duma may, perhaps, “regain the unanimity” with which the nomination
of Khomyakov was once accepted. “This unanimity would show that theentireDuma realises the exceptional gravity of the situation.”

ThuswroteRech. “The entire Duma”, nothing more nor
less. This should be recalled as often as possible during the elections to
the Fourth Duma!

TheCadets are perfectly well aware that the Rights, on principle, are
for a Duma without rights; that the Nationalists justify and defend
Stolypin and the violation of Article 87. And yet, merely for the sake of
voting for Alexeyenko, the Cadets are prepared to forget everything and to
pro claim the unanimity of “theentireDuma”, although they too
are fully aware that the workers’ deputies willunder no
circumstancesallow themselves to be duped by the “unanimity” of the
Third Duma, any more than they did at the time of Khomyakov’s election.

Itis obvious that, as far as the Cadets are concerned, the workers’
deputies and the Trudoviks do not count. The Third Duma without them, but
with the Rights, with Markov the Second and Purishkevich, is “theentireDuma”.That is what the statement ofRechamounts to. And this reasoning ofRechcorrectly draws
the line which many have so often interpreted wrongly—namely, the line
between the feudal landowners and the bourgeoisie (even the most
“liberal”, i. e., the Cadet variety), on the one hand, and the workers
and the peasants, i. e., the forces of democracy, on the other. Without the
forces of democracy, but with the Rights, “we”, say the Cadets, are “the
entire Duma”. That means that when they lay claim to the title of
democrats the, Cadets are deceiving the people. That means that, as far as
the Cadets are concerned, “we” implies the feudal landowners and the
bourgeoisie; the rest do not count.

Theminor question of the election of a new Chairman of the State Duma
has served to remind us once again of the essential truth that the Cadets
arenotdemocrats, but moderate liberal bourgeois, who long for
“the unanimity” of “the entire” parliament of diehard reactionaries and
Octobrists.Competitionwith the Octobrists—is all that the
“struggle” the Cadets are waging against them amounts to. The Cadets are
fighting the Octobrists—there is no doubt of that. But they are not
fighting them as representatives of a class, as representatives of larger
sections of the population, and the aim of their fight is not to remove the
old regime to which the Octobrists are adapting themselves; they are
fighting them ascompetitorswho are anxious to adapt them selves
tothe sameregime, to serve the interests ofthe sameclass, and to protect it from the too exacting demandsof the wider sections of the population (the democratic elements in general
and of the proletariat in particular). All that the Cadets are after is to
adapt themselves to the same regime, but in a slightly different way; that
is the sub stance of their policy, the policy of the liberal bourgeois. And
it is this competition with the Octobrists, the struggle to step intotheirshoes, that lends the fight of the Cadets its peculiar
“pungency”. This explains thespecial hostilityof the Rights
and the Octobrists towards the Cadets; it is a hostility of a special kind:
“those fellows” (the democrats) are out to annihilate them, while “these
fellows” (the Cadets) want to force them down one rung of the ladder; the
first prospect calls for an irreconcilable struggle as a matter of
principle, it calls for a life and death struggle; the second prospect
implies a fightfor the top jobs, a contest in the sphere of
intrigue, rivalry as regards the methods of winning the very same
landowning and bourgeois majority, or of earning the confidence of the very
same old regime.

Thepicture which the Third Duma presented on the day of the election
of the new Chairman clearly showed this difference.

TheCadet recorder of events “in parliamentary circles” continued to
sing the praises of Alexeyenko inRechof March 23, describing him
as “a man quite independent and with a strong sense of dignity”, and so
on and so forth. This is said of an Octobrist who delighted in the coup of
June 3!

Suchis the Cadet gauge for strict legality: not to protest against
June 3, but to protest against March 14. It reminds one of the American
saying: “If you steal a loaf of bread you’ll surely go to jail, but if you
steal a railroad you’ll be made a senator”.

Mr.Litovtsev,who is responsible for the “In Parliamentary Circles”
column inRech, on March 23 wrote that the Left Octobrists and the
Cadets “spent a good half of the day worrying: what if he decides to
accept” (meaning Rodzyanko who pretended that he was declining
nomination).

Howcould the struggle between the Cadets and their opponents help
beingsharpwhen the matter revolves around a question so close to
and so directly affecting theentireThird Duma, namely, “What if Rodzyanko decides to accept?”!

Rodzyankodid decide to accept. What happened at the elections was that
the Rights and the Nationalists roared with laughter and applauded for all
they were worth; while the “Left” Octobrists and theCadetsmaintained a stubborn, systematic silence: they were beaten at their own
game; they could not rejoice; theywere forcedto maintain
silence. “By way of protest”, the Cadets cast their vote for the
Nationalist Volkonsky. The democrats alone declared loudly, unequivocally,
and clearly that they would take no part in the election of the new
Chairman of the Third Duma, and that they declinedanyresponsibility for “the entire activity of the Third Duma”
(Voiloshnikov’s words).

Onthe day of the elections, at the 86th sitting of the Duma, the only
ones whospokein the contest between the competitors were
Rodzyanko, the head of the Third Duma, Bulat, and Voiloshnikov. The rest
were silent.

Voiloshnikov,speaking on behalf of all the members of his group,
correctly pointed out that the Cadets, “due to the peculiar nature of
their political position, have always placed all their hopes in alliances
inside the Duma”, and he ridiculed them as gullible liberals.

TheCadets’ political position and its peculiar nature are to be
explained by the class character of this party. It is an anti-democratic
bourgeois-liberal party. That is why they “always place all their hopes in
alliances inside the Duma”. This is true in two senses: first, in the
sense of contrasting what is going on inside the Duma with what is going on
outside it; and, secondly, in the sense that it refers to “alliances”
among those social elements, those classes, which represent the “entire”
Third Duma.

Inconnection with the election of Rodzyanko, which signified a victory
for the Nationalists, only the workers’ deputies and the Trudoviks came out
with statements which werenotmeant to promote any alliances
“inside the Duma”; with statements which explained the attitude of the
forces of democracy in general and of the proletarian forces of democracy
in particular, toward theentireThird Duma, toward the coup of
June 3, and toward the Octobrists and the Cadets jointly. These statements
represented a propernotice served on Rodzyanko and the whole of “his” majority, a proper
warning to the “responsible” liberal “opposition” (responsible to the
Third Duma and to the men of June 3) by political parties “responsible”
to certain other forces.

[1]InMarch 1911 the Council of State turned down the Bill on the
establishment of Zemstvos in the Western Gubernias, which had been
introduced by the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, P. A. Stolypin.

Asa result of this attitude, Stolypin handed in his resignation which
Nicholas II refused to accept. Stolypin then succeeded in having the State
Duma and the Council of State prorogued for three days (from March 12 to 14
[25 to 27]) and passed the law on Zemstvos in the Western Gubernias by
invoking Article 87 which empowered the government to adopt laws by-passing
the legislative organs when they were not functioning “if extraordinary
circumstances make such action essential”.

Thisinvoking of Article 87 to by-pass the legislative organs lead to
the demonstrative resignation of A. I. Guchkov, Chairman of the State Duma,
and the election of a new Chairman, the Right Octobrist M. V. Rodzyanko.